Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the early links

Left: The Luis Ortiz biography of the Emshwillers referred to in the Carol Emshwiller interview.

Below: From the publisher's note: Carol Emshwiller's fiction has received an NEA grant and a Pushcart Prize, as well as the Philip K. Dick, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. In 2005 she received the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Thanks to all contributors and readers...and I suspect a few more links might be on their way in today...we shall see!

Bill Crider: Mr. Brooks (trailer)

Brian Arnold: comedian John Pinette; Tales of the Tinkerdee

David Schmidt: Curse of the Black Widow

George Kelley: Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

Iba Dawson: Rope

Ivan Shreve: Detective Story (1951)

James Reasoner: The Dakotas

Jerry House: An Interview with Arthur Conan Doyle (1927; early sound newsreel)

John Charles: Reel Injun

Juri Nummelin: The Jericho Mile

Lawrence Person: Frankenstein (1910)

Patti Abbott: Love with a Proper Stranger

Randy Johnson: The films of Herb Jeffries

Ron Scheer: Buchanan Rides Alone

Scott Cupp: The High Crusade

Stacia Jones: The Phantom Creeps (cont'd)

Todd Mason: The International Animation Festival (1977-78) and its components; the short films of Ed Emshwiller and an interview with Carol Emshwiller; from Roy Wheldon's musical setting of Rudy Rucker's novel, Like a Passing River (please see below)

Walter Albert: Michael Shayne, Private Detective (1940)

Yvette Banek: The Adventures of Tartu

Related matters:Brent McKee: The US Commercial TV Status Report

Ed Gorman: The Bride Wore Black

George Kelley: Page Eight; The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael
Patti Abbott: Margin Call

Todd Mason:
MaxiCat was a Yugoslav cartoon character who flourished in a series of shorts for television out of Zagreb in the early 1970s; I first came across the cartoons in the thoroughly enjoyable International Animation Festival, aka the International Festival of Animation series on PBS, hosted by Jean Marsh, in 1977-78 (there were two seasons of 13 episodes each).


Sadly, some of the more clever MaxiCat cartoons aren't posted as yet, but perhaps they still exist somewhere. These two aren't bad examples:



And among the other work the Festival introduced many of us to was Munro, which I highlighted previously, and the 1974 short animation Oscar-winner, "Closed Mondays":


Or such National Film Board of Canada productions as "Hunger":


And the Hubleys' charming "Moonbird"


And what might well be the first animated film:


I'm pretty sure I first saw Ed Emshwiller's pioneering animation "Relativity" on the Festival as well, but alas that film doesn't seem to be up, either. But the also pioneering "Sunstone" is:


And "Thanatopsis":


And this study of landscapes and forms and of his wife, the writer Carol Emshwiller (also the film's title; she served as model for so many of the paintings he signed as "Emsh", such as the right-side-up one at the head of this post):


A brief interview segment, featuring Ed Emshwiller and Morton Subotnick:

Ars Electronica 1988 - Morton Subotnick, Ed Emshwiller from ars history on Vimeo.

And an interview with Carol Emshwiller, on her 90th birthday this year, about her work as a writer (and her Collected Stories) and tangentially about her work with her husband:


And, finally this week, the central song from Roy Wheldon's setting of Rudy Rucker's autobiographical novel All the Visions to music, the song "Like a Passing River" (featuring lyrics translated by Gary Snyder from the poet Han Shan):

FFB: THE COLLECTED STORIES OF CAROL EMSHWILLER; MISTER DA V by Kit Reed; A WITCH'S DOZEN by Janet Fox; JANE QUIET by K.A. Laity and Elena Steier

The issue including Kit Reed's first published short story...and quite an impressive lot else (please see below):

Essentially four books here, though the last listed is also the first issue of a continuing series of comics devoted to a psychic investigator named in honor of Algernon Blackwood's character John Silence.

The Collected Stories, Volume One...publisher Luis Ortiz keeps having one valuable, if not always cash-cow-like, idea after another, and the brilliant Carol Emshwiller, who has written many very important and many very odd stories in what has been a long career, has also long needed a comprehensive collection of her work...volume two might be a bit shorter, when it appears, as it mostly might be made up of stories still in inventory at magazines and more importantly in the contents of anthologies not yet published. Emshwiller, as the contents list below indicates, after a first sale to a (failing) regional magazine in 1954, started publishing mostly in the magazines edited by Robert Lowndes (the crime-fiction magazines and Future, Science Fiction and SF Quarterly), which were low-budget but open to experimental and off-trail writing (James Blish placed "Common Time" in one; William Tenn "The Liberation of Earth" likewise; Edward Hoch was always happy to note that he was first published by Lowndes). Such early Emshwiller stories as "Hunting Machine" did not often offer many variations on traditional narrative storytelling, but as she noted in her introduction, they came, to one degree or another, from what writer, critic, editor and writing instructor Damon Knight referred to as "deep inside"...they have a powerful resonance that sounds throughout the reader's psyche. This, as even Emshwiller (not the most self-promoting of writers) notes, only strengthened as she continued. Such brilliant, playful and influential work as "Sex and/or Mr. Morrison" and "Strangers" would follow, even as the earlier "Pelt" took another tack on the matter of "Hunting Machine" (both prime candidates for any anthology arguing for animal rights). Not reflected in this collection are her novels, such as the historical westerns Ledoyt and its companion Leaping Man Hill or the animal fantasy Carmen Dog and the challenging novel of alien conquest of Earth, The Mount. What is here is a generous sample of the work that has won her two Nebula awards, the Philip Dick award and the Life Achievement award from the World Fantasy Convention in 1995, as well as devoted readers in several different literary communities. (Please also see Ortiz's Emshwiller: Infinity x 2, a dual biography of Carol and her husband, painter/illustrator/filmmaker Ed Emshwiller, a remarkable book about remarkable subjects.) Here, a few examples of the cover paintings for which Ed Emshwiller used Carol and himself as models (click to enlarge):



















Not too different is the CV of Kit Reed, who also writes as Kit Craig (mostly her crime fiction thus); her driver's license presumably tags her Lillian Craig Reed. A decade younger than Emshwiller, she got her professional fiction-writing start half a decade later, in a ridiculously good issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from late in Anthony Boucher's editorship, for April, 1958...so ridiculous that I'll give the ISFDb listing of its contents:
5 • Guardian Spirit • novelette by Chad Oliver
39 • The Watchers • poem by Anthony Brode
40 • Obstinate Uncle Otis • [Murchison Morks] • (1941) • shortstory by Robert Arthur
48 • The Grantha Sighting • shortstory by Avram Davidson
56 • The Wait • shortstory by Kit Reed
70 • No Evidence • shortstory by Victoria Lincoln
78 • The Death of Each Day • shortstory by Margaret St. Clair [as by Idris Seabright ]
88 • The Witch of Ramoth • (1953) • shortstory by Mark Van Doren
93 • Recommended Reading (F&SF, April 1958) • [Recommended Reading] • essay by Anthony Boucher
93 •   Review: Spaceways Satellite by Charles Eric Maine • review by Anthony Boucher
93 •   Review: Rocket Power and Space Flight by G. Harry Stine • review by Anthony Boucher
94 •   Review: Wasp by Eric Frank Russell • review by Anthony Boucher
94 •   Review: Year 2018! by James Blish • review by Anthony Boucher
94 •   Review: They'd Rather be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley • review by Anthony Boucher
94 •   Review: The Mind Cage by A. E. van Vogt • review by Anthony Boucher
95 •   Review: The Dreamers by Roger Manvell • review by Anthony Boucher
95 •   Review: Earthman's Burden by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson • review by Anthony Boucher
95 •   Review: Robots and Changelings by Lester del Rey • review by Anthony Boucher
95 •   Review: Those Idiots from Earth by Richard Wilson • review by Anthony Boucher
95 •   Review: Three Times Infinity by Leo Margulies • review by Anthony Boucher
96 • Broken Circuit • shortstory by Arthur Oesterreicher
100 • A Deskful of Girls • [Change War] • novelette by Fritz Leiber
125 • Poor Little Warrior! • shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss

...with that first story, which Reed, as noted below, had entitled "To Be Taken in a Strange Country" and would place it as such as the lead story in her first collection, Mister Da V. and Other Stories. (Among the other things Emshwiller and Reed share is that their first collections came far too late for any sense of justice in publishing...Reed's book was published in England in 1967 and would await its US edition for six years; Emshwiller's first collection, also her first book, Joy in Our Cause, didn't appear till 1974. The Reed collection also notably lacks any introduction, either to the book or the individual stories, a bit of sadness for those of us who love the headnotes and other interstitials provided by the likes of Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison in their books.) "Automatic Tiger" might've been the first Reed story to gain a lot of attention in the fantasy community, a heavily metaphoric tale of a young man who gains enormously in life through the purchase of a remarkably lifelike tiger mechanism, and what fate has in store for them both; it was certainly the first Reed story I read. Reed, too, is expert in resonance and playful wit, as she demonstrates throughout this collection, in her further collections and novels since, and in her short fiction that has appeared in fantastic-fiction, contemporary-mimetic and little, and crime-fiction magazines over the years since; happily, Reed is still writing, as Emshwiller, who has been having some health reverses, might not continue to do, though we can hope the latter is not stymied. One thing that connects such writers as these two, and, say, Kate Wilhelm, who got her start neatly between Emshwiller and Reed and has had a not dissimilarly eclectic career since, is that one senses their exploration of character from the "inside", while such colleagues and similarly complete artists as Theodore Sturgeon, Damon Knight and Fritz Leiber often seem to make their observation of character at a greater auctorial distance, not so much objective as simply more divorced from identification with the characters under discussion and on display.

Including the brilliant Arcana story "Demon and Demoiselle"; the Malzberg story is actually a (very funny) collaboration with Bill Pronzini, "Another Burnt-Out Case":
Also true of the younger, later-starting, and now late (as noted here at the time of her death's announcement) Janet Fox, who published the helpful market-guide and general-interest magazine about writers and the small press, Scavenger's Newsletter, for more than a decade; she was the first to buy my creative work, a poem, to be published in a national forum. More importantly, she began publishing her own fiction, with "Materialist"...another Robert Lowndes "discovery," I belatedly remember, for his Magazine of Horror in 1970, and the first in a series of horror stories in which she takes cliches and makes them happily (if usually disturbingly) literal. Perhaps the best of this series, "Screaming to Get Out" (from Weirdbook, the co-publisher Ganley's long-running little magazine of fantasy and horror) is included in this, 2003's A Witch's Dozen, the only collection of Fox's fiction to be published during her lifetime; the only other books she would publish were a series of novels under the pseudonym Alex McDonough. This continues to gnaw at me, given the excellence of these thirteen stories, which includes three of her fantasy series-characters, Scorpia and Arcana and Morrien, with a new story of the last as the book's one original publication. Well-illustrated by Stephen Fabian, it's a volume worth seeking out, and it needs a companion. Even in what little we have of her, she's one of the best sword and sorcery writers and one of the better horror writers we've seen.

A full-color page from the next Jane Quiet adventure (Quiet's future clients pictured rather than she herself; click to enlarge considerably):
And my friend Kate, K. A. Laity, and her friend Elena Steier decided to collaborate on a comic, as noted above, about a psychic investigator named in honor of John Silence; they decided further the challenge along by making this first adventure, at least, one with no dialog whatsoever, allowing Jane Quiet to live up to her name, at least as far as speaking was concerned. Steier's one proviso, as Laity notes in the introduction on the inside front cover, was that the monster be kick-ass...and so it is, as Lovecraftian (though, unlike HPL's, actually visible and seen in detail) as Mike Mignola (Hellboy) could ask for. Quiet and her confederates investigate the events that have killed one teen girl and hospitalized another, seemingly (to the survivor's terrified parents; we the "readers" are less uncertain) involving their daughter and her friend's dabbling in black magic. (Injokes: Quiet's office and probable residence is in a building that also might just house Algernon Blackwood, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Edith Wharton, or their ghosts; from some angles and in some panels, Steier draws Quiet to resemble Laity.) Things don't all go the way Quiet and company hope, but the ending, in yet another coincidence I've belatedly realized, rather reverses the situation found in Leiber's "A Deskful of Girls" (the cover story in the ridiculously good issue of F&SF detailed above). This issue, too, is great fun, and worth the procurement effort, if your local comics store is so foolish as to not have it at hand. Laity might be the literary child of Angela Carter and Peter Cook and Italo Calvino, and Steier the artistic child of Trina Robbins and Gahan Wilson and Jules Feiffer, and there's not a little dash of Joan Aiken in both, but none of that estranges them at all from the work of the other women too insufficiently celebrated here...

...and did I happen to mention that I recently picked up a 1955 issue of the Cornell-based little magazine Epoch with some of the very young Joanna Russ's poetry in it? Inasmuch as it also has stories by R. V. Cassil and Lysander Kemp, it could've been an issue of F&SF as easily as Epoch, though the Philip Roth story would nudge it more in the Partisan Review direction (a 1962 issue I bought along with the elder features just two long stories by two young men just getting their legs at the time, Ronald Sukenick and Tom Pynchon, as the latter signs himself...this would also be the magazine which, a few years later, published the career-jump-starter for Joyce Carol Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"). Eh, later.


The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Volume 1, edited by Luis Ortiz and Carol Emshwiller (Non-Stop Press 2011, cover painting by Ed Emshwiller)
contents courtesy of Non-Stop Press:
Table of Contents:
Foreword by Carol Emshwiller
Built For Pleasure (Long Island Suburban, November 1954)
The Victim (Smashing Detective,Vol. 4, No. 2, September 1955)
This Thing Called Love (Future Science Fiction, no. 28, December 1955)
Love Me Again (Science Fiction Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 2, February 1956)
The Piece Thing (Science Fiction Quarterly, May 1956)
Bingo And Bongo (Future Science Fiction, #31, Winter 1956-1957)
Nightmare Call (Future Science Fiction, No. 32, Spring 1957)
Murray Is For Murder (Fast Action Detective and Mystery, March 1957)
The Coming (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1957)
Hunting Machine (Science Fiction Stories, May 1957)
Hands (Double-Action Detective, #7, Summer, 1957)
You’ll Feel Better… (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1957)
Two-Step For Six Legs (Science Fiction Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2, August 1957)
Baby (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1958)
Idol’s Eye (Future Science Fiction, #35, February 1958)
Pelt (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1958)
Day At The Beach (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1959)
Puritan Planet (Science Fiction Stories, January 1960)
But Soft What Light… (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1966)
Chicken Icarus (Cavalier, October 1966)
Eohippus (Transatlantic Review, 1967)
Sex and/or Mr. Morrison (Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison, Doubleday, 1967)
Krashaw (A City Sampler, July 1967)
Lib (Triquarterly, 1968; New Worlds, March 1968)
Animal (Orbit 4, ed. Damon Knight, G.P. Putnam, 1968)
Methapyrilene Hydrochloride Sometimes Helps (New Worlds, July 1968)
White Dove (New Worlds, No. 188, March 1969)
I Love You (Epoch, vol. xix, no. 1, 1969)
The Queen of Sleep (New Directions, Vol. 22; New Worlds, 1970)
Peninsula (The Richmond Review, 1970)
Debut (Orbit 6, ed. D. Knight, G.P. Putnam, 1970)
The Institute (Alchemy and Academe, ed. Anne McCaffrey, Doubleday, 1970)
A Possible Episode In The Picaresque Adventures Of Mr. J.H.B. Monstrosee (Quark/2, Paperback Library, February 1971)
Woman Waiting (Orbit 7, ed. D. Knight, G.P. Putnam, 1970)
Yes, Virginia (Transatlantic Review, 1971)
Al (Orbit 10, ed. D. Knight, G.P. Putnam, 1972)
Strangers (Bad Moon Rising, ed. Thomas Disch, Harper & Row, 1973)
The Childhood of the Human Hero (Showcase, Harper & Row, 1973)
Autobiography (Joy In Our Cause, a Carol Emshwiller collection, Harper & Row, 1974)
Maybe Another Long March Across China 80,000 Strong (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
Joy in Our Cause (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
Biography of an Uncircumcised Man (Including Interview) (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
To the Association (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
Destinations, Premonitions and the Nature of Anxiety (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
Dog Is Dead (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
One Part Of The Self Is Always Tall And Dark (Confrontation No. 14, 1977)
Escape Is No Accident (2076: The American Tricentennial, ed. Edward Bryant, Pyramid Books, 1977)
Thanne Longen Folk To Goen On Pilgrimages (The Little Magazine, vol. 11, no. 2, summer 1977)
Expecting Sunshine and Getting It (Croton Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, summer 1978)
Omens (Edges, ed. Ursula Le Guin and Virginia Kidd, Pocket Books, 1980)
Abominable (Orbit 21, ed. D. Knight, Harper & Row, 1980)
The Start Of The End Of It All (Universe 11, ed. Terry Carr, Doubleday, 1981)
Slowly Bumbling in the Void (New Directions 42, 1981)
Queen Kong (13th Moon, 1982)
The Futility of Fixed Positions (Portland Review, Vol. 28, No. 2, 1982)
Mental Health and Its Alternative (Confrontation, Nos. 25-26, 1983)
Verging on the Pertinent (13th Moon, Vol. vii, Nos. 1-2, 1984)
There Is No God But Bog (Pulpsmith, Summer 1985)
Eclipse (The Little Magazine, vol. 15, no. 2, 1986)
The Circular Library of Stones (Omni, Feb. 1987)
If Not Forever, When? (PsychCritique, vol. 2, no. 2, 1987)
Vilcabamba (Twilight Zone Magazine, August 1987)
Fledged (Omni, December 1988)
The Promise Of Undying Love (Verging on the Pertinent, a Carol Emshwiller collection, Coffee House Press, 1989)
What Every Woman Knows (Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989)
Not Burning (Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989)
Being Mysterious Strangers from Distant Shores (The Village Voice Literary Supplement, March 1989)
Clerestory (Croton Review, No. 9)
Living At The Center (Ice River, No. 4, June 1989)
Yukon (Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989)
As If (Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989)
Secrets of the Native Tongue (Ascent, vol. 14, no. 3, 1989)
Moon Songs (The Start of the End of it All, a Carol Emshwiller collection, The Women’s Press, 1990)
Acceptance Speech (The Start of the End of It All, The Women’s Press, 1990)
Looking Down (Omni, January 1990)
Peri (Strange Plasma #3 1990)
If The Word Was To The Wise (The Start of the End of It All, Mercury House, 1991)
There Is No Evil Angel But Love (The Start of the End of It All, Mercury House, 1991)
Draculalucard (The Start of the End of It All, Mercury House 1991)
Emissary (The Start of the End of It All, Mercury House 1991)
Mrs. Jones (Omni, August 1993)
Venus Rising (Edgewood Press, 1992, a chapbook)
Modillion (Strange Plasma, no. 8 1994; Green Mountain Review, 1994)
After Shock (Century, no.3, September-October 1995)
The Project (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 2001)
Foster Mother (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2001)
Creature (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct./Nov. 2001)
Grandma (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 2002)
Notes On Stories
About The Author
from the Locus Index:
A Witch’s Dozen by Janet Fox (Wildside Press/W. Paul Ganley 1-59224-048-8, Jul 2003, $30.00, 175pp, hc, cover by Stephen E. Fabian) Collection of 13 fantasy and horror stories, one original. This is a print-on-demand edition, co-published by Wildside Press and W. Paul Ganley. Paperback edition also available.

7 · Witches · ss Tales by Moonlight, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Robert T. Garcia, 1983
19 · Small Magic · ss Amazing Jan ’82
41 · In the Kingdom of the Thorn [Scorpia] · ss Whispers Oct ’83
52 · A Witch in Time [Arcana] · ss Fantastic Sep ’73
68 · Demon and Demoiselle [Arcana] · nv Fantastic Oct ’78
88 · Morrien’s Bitch [Morrien & Riska] · ss Amazons!, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson, DAW, 1979
106 · Screaming to Get Out · ss Weirdbook #12 ’77
113 · Valentine · ss Shadows #2, ed. Charles L. Grant, Doubleday, 1979
123 · Taking Care of Bertie · ss Eldritch Tales #11 ’85
130 · The Skins You Love to Touch · ss Shadows #9, ed. Charles L. Grant, Doubleday, 1986
136 · Garage Sale · ss Twilight Zone Aug ’82
142 · Surrogate · ss Fears, ed. Charles L. Grant, Berkley, 1983
149 · Alliances [Morrien & Riska] · nv *

from the Contento index:
Mister Da V. and Other Stories Kit Reed (London: Faber and Faber, 1967, 21/-, 219pp, hc); Also in pb (Berkley Medallion Jul ’73).

11 · To Be Taken in a Strange Country [“The Wait”] · ss F&SF Apr ’58
31 · Devotion · ss F&SF Jun ’58
42 · The Reign of Tarquin the Tall · ss F&SF Jul ’58
59 · Ordeal [“The Quest”] · nv Fantastic Universe Jan ’60
(70) · Judas Bomb · ss F&SF Apr ’61 (in the pb)
95 · Piggy · ss F&SF Aug ’61
113 · Mister Da V. · ss Seventeen May ’62
128 · The New You · ss F&SF Sep ’62
141 · Automatic Tiger · ss F&SF Mar ’64
(136) · I Am Through with Bus Trips · ss *
172 · Golden Acres · nv *
195 · At Central · ss *
209 · Janell Harmon’s Testament · ss *
Script by K. A. Laity; art by Elena Steier; published in 2008 by Steier and Laity; 40pp.

Aside from the images of the review items (from their publishers' sites), images courtesy of Galactic Central or ISFDb and their Visco files.

FFB: Horror and Fantasy Annuals, 1992 editions, edited by Karl Edward Wagner, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell

Hachette, which had purchased the UK firm Constable and Robinson and essentially made it an imprint of their previous purchase Little, Brown, have further gone on to announce essentially the extinction of the Mammoth Book line of anthologies, a quarter-century-plus tradition of mostly fine, fat anthologies of fiction and sometimes nonfiction (occasionally of photography and comics), for most of that period reprinted/co-published (on miserable paper, too often) by the now defunct Carroll & Graf in the US, latterly mostly by the Philly-based Running Press. This is distressing to me as a reader in greatest part because it means at least the dispersal of a fine set of annuals...Stephen Jones has found another publisher for his Best New Horror, and Maxim Jakubowski hopes to do likewise for his Best British Crime (formerly Best New British Mysteries) and Best New Erotica annuals...but also of a fine and diverse set of one-offs edited by Mike Ashley and the two annual editors and not a few others of note.

Somewhat reminiscent of how St. Martin's/Tor/Forge decided to shed Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg's crime-fiction annual, and then the Ellen Datlow/Kelly Link and Gavin Grant fantasy and horror annual, while at least having the wit to retain the Gardner Dozois sf annual (which was reprinted in Britain as as a Mammoth annual)...Datlow found

herself another publisher, doing a volume on her own, till that publisher became insolvent, leaving several annuals under their imprint to scramble for new publishers.

So, this time of changes casts me back to 1992, perhaps for no better reason than I was to take a job at a new Borders Book Shop in Northern Virginia in that year and among my first responsibilities was to take care of the small horror-fiction section in the store, which meant I also took care of the westerns and war fiction, no burden at all (Borders is probably the only chain store in US history to have had dedicated war fiction and labor studies sections in every outlet, at least in the heroic early years)...there were Mammoth Books in both those sections, as well...

The ferment of 1980s horror publishing, in the wake of the consistent best-selling status of Stephen King, Anne Rice, V. C. Andrews, James Herbert, John Saul and others as we entered the decade (including the remnants of the new Gothics so prevalent at the beginning of the '70s, beyond Rice and Andrews...and Thomas Tryon hadn't hurt, even as Ira Levin had been perhaps the first in his wave to get publishers to sit up and note the consistency with which his horror and horror-bybrid novels had been selling from Rosemary's Baby onward), was definitely thinning out in the early '90s, which had the disadvantage of less money thrown at horror publishing but also the advantage of somewhat less opportunistic publishing of anything that might ooze slowly down the wall when thrown at it to stick (apologies to those still pining for the novels of Ruby Jean Jensen and Guy N. Smith).  More of those who remained, even at such last redoubts as the interesting book line Dell Abyss, edited by Jeanne Cavelos (leading off with challenging novels by Poppy Z. Brite and Kathe Koja) were in it for the art, as much as possible...and the annuals of this year demonstrate that rather handily...

Judith Merril meant Science Fantasy, as an
all-inclusive term, by SF in those years...

Some, like George Kelley, find unfortunate the tendency toward annual megabookery (even given that both the pioneering annuals in fantastic fiction from Bleiler and Ditky and from Judith Merril tended to be rather fat themselves, and the early likes of Christine Campbell Thomson or Dorothy L. Sayer's horror and suspense anthologies of the 1930s would easily run from five hundred to over a thousand pages--not so good for propping on the belly), but I'm still fond of the diversity of the three annuals published in the US in 1992, and their heirs today...it's notable that the veteran of the three annuals, Karl Edward Wagner's (listed third below) is the only one to reach out to not only a biker magazine (a subculture Wagner kept a foot in) for one of its contributions, but also to the sports-fiction little magazine Aethlon for a baseball story by the Canadian writer Edo van Belkom. The closest thing to a ringer in the Datlow & Windling volume is a 1967 story from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and if I can dig out my copy to review, I might be able to say why it was included (newly collected in a book from the author, or otherwise seemingly lost and recently come upon by Ellen?--in comments, Matthew Davis notes the magazine reprinted the story in a 1991 issue, a regular feature I belatedly recall of AHMM in those years); Jones and Campbell pull a David Schow story from the music magazine Reflex.  But mostly, with perhaps a higher number of overlapping story inclusions than most years in these annuals, you see the continuing development of new and old writers, and not a few of these story titles will leap out at you if you've read in the fields at all over the last several decades...DAW Books were already thinning out their annuals by '92, having given up on on their Year's Best Fantasy Stories a few years before, and Donald Wollheim's own sf annual for his imprint had ended with his death in 1990, even as Wagner's would a few years later with his death.  Ramsey Campbell's story is in all three books, and not the least noteworthy here are the important early stories from Kathe Koja and Elizabeth Hand...and a key story from Alan Brennert....

Indices courtesy the Locus/Homeville index pages:

Best New Horror 3 ed. Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell (Carroll & Graf 0-88184-858-1, Sep ’92 [Aug ’92], $21.00, 417pp, hc) Best-of-the-year anthology of 29 horror stories from 1991, with an introduction and a necrology by the editors. Recommended (SW [Susan Wood]).

• xvii · Introduction: Horror in 1991 · Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell · in
• 1 · True Love · K. W. Jeter · ss A Whisper of Blood, ed. Ellen Datlow, Morrow, 1991
• 15 · The Same in Any Language · Ramsey Campbell · ss Weird Tales Sum ’91
• 27 · Impermanent Mercies · Kathe Koja · ss Dark Voices 3, ed. David Sutton & Stephen Jones, London: Pan, 1991
• 35 · Ma Qui · Alan Brennert · ss F&SF Feb ’91
• 53 · The Miracle Mile · Robert R. McCammon · nv Under the Fang, ed. Robert R. McCammon, Pocket, 1991
• 71 · Taking Down the Tree · Steve Rasnic Tem · vi Pulphouse Dec 31 ’91
• 75 · Where Flies Are Born · Douglas Clegg · ss Tekeli-li! #2 ’91
• 85 · Love, Death and the Maiden [“Mädelein”] · Roger Johnson · ss The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories 2, ed. Richard Dalby, Carroll & Graf, 1991
• 97 · Chui Chai · S. P. Somtow · ss The Ultimate Frankenstein, ed. Byron Preiss, David Kellor, Megan Miller & John Gregory Betancourt, Dell, 1991
• 111 · The Snow Sculptures of Xanadu · Kim Newman · ss Million #5 ’91
• 117 · Colder Than Hell · Edward Bryant · ss Cold Shocks, ed. Tim Sullivan, Avon, 1991
• 129 · Raymond · Nancy A. Collins · ss The Ultimate Werewolf, ed. Byron Preiss, David Kellor, Megan Miller & John Gregory Betancourt, Dell, 1991
• 143 · One Life, in an Hourglass · Charles L. Grant · ss The Bradbury Chronicles, ed. William F. Nolan & Martin H. Greenberg, Roc, 1991
• 155 · The Braille Encyclopedia · Grant Morrison · ss Hotter Blood, ed. Jeff Gelb & Michael Garrett, Pocket, 1991
• 167 · The Bacchae · Elizabeth Hand · ss Interzone Jul ’91
• 183 · Busted in Buttown · David J. Schow · ss Reflex Dec ’91
• 189 · Subway Story · Russell Flinn · ss Stirring Within, British Fantasy Society, 1990
• 201 · The Medusa · Thomas Ligotti · nv Fantasy Tales, #7, ed. Stephen Jones & David A. Sutton, Robinson, 1991
• 221 · Power Cut · Joel Lane · ss Skeleton Crew Apr ’91
• 229 · Moving Out · Nicholas Royle · ss Skeleton Crew Jan ’91
• 235 · Guignoir · Norman Partridge · ss Guignoir and Other Furies, ed. George Hatch, Horror’s Head Press, 1991
• 259 · Blood Sky · William F. Nolan · ss The Blood Sky, Deadline Press, 1991
• 279 · Ready · David Starkey · ss Grue #12 ’91
• 289 · The Slug · Karl Edward Wagner · nv A Whisper of Blood, ed. Ellen Datlow, Morrow, 1991
• 301 · The Dark Land · Michael Marshall Smith · ss Darklands, ed. Nicholas Royle, Edgerton Press, 1991
• 321 · When They Gave Us Memory · Dennis Etchison · ss Final Shadows, ed. Charles L. Grant, Doubleday Foundation, 1991
• 337 · Taking Care of Michael · J. L. Comeau · vi Borderlands 2, ed. Thomas F. Monteleone, Borderlands Press, 1991
• 341 · The Dreams of Dr. Ladybank · Thomas Tessier · na Night Visions 9, ed. Anon., Arlington Heights, IL: Dark Harvest, 1991
• 399 · Zits · Nina Kiriki Hoffman · vi Iniquities Fll ’91
• 403 · Necrology: 1991 · Stephen Jones & Kim Newman · bg

The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Fifth Annual Collection ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (St. Martin’s 0-312-07888-9, Aug ’92 [Jul ’92], $15.95, 518pp, tp, cover by Thomas Canty) Best-of-the-year anthology of 44 stories and six poems, plus a summation of the year in horror and fantasy by the editors, a survey of fantasy and sf in the media, and a necrology. This is the best of the horror/fantasy “bests” Highly recommended (SW). A hardcover edition (-07887-0, $27.95) was announced but not seen.

• xiii · Summation 1991: Fantasy · Terri Windling · ar
• xxix · Summation 1991: Horror · Ellen Datlow · ar
• lxviii · Horror and Fantasy in the Media: 1991 · Edward Bryant · ar
• lxxvi · Obituaries · Misc. · ob
• 1 · The Beautiful Uncut Hair of Graves · David Morrell · nv Final Shadows, ed. Charles L. Grant, Doubleday Foundation, 1991
• 27 · In Carnation · Nancy Springer · ss Catfantastic II, ed. Andre Norton & Martin H. Greenberg, DAW, 1991
• 38 · The Somewhere Doors · Fred Chappell · nv More Shapes Than One, St. Martin’s, 1991
• 55 · Poe at the End · R. H. W. Dillard · pm Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture Mar ’91
• 58 · Angels in Love · Kathe Koja · ss F&SF Jul ’91
• 64 · Vivian · Midori Snyder · nv The Fantastic Adventures of Robin Hood, ed. Martin H. Greenberg, Signet, 1991
• 81 · True Love · K. W. Jeter · ss A Whisper of Blood, ed. Ellen Datlow, Morrow, 1991
• 92 · The Second Most Beautiful Woman in the World · A. R. Morlan · ss Obsessions, ed. Gary Raisor, Arlington Heights, IL: Dark Harvest, 1991
• 103 · The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death [Swordspoint] · Ellen Kushner · ss F&SF Sep ’91
• 113 · The Ragthorn · Robert Holdstock & Garry Kilworth · nv A Whisper of Blood, ed. Ellen Datlow, Morrow, 1991
• 139 · The Smell · Patrick McGrath · ss The New Gothic, ed. Bradford Morrow & Patrick McGrath, Random House, 1991
• 144 · The Tenth Scholar · Steve Rasnic & Melanie Tem · ss The Ultimate Dracula, ed. Byron Preiss, David Kellor & Megan Miller, Dell, 1991
• 154 · Fisher Death · Jessica Amanda Salmonson · pm Weird Tales Spr ’91
• 155 · Walk in Sable · Jessica Amanda Salmonson · pm Haunts #22 ’91
• 156 · The Cut Man · Norman Partridge · ss Copper Star, ed. Bruce D. Arthurs, 1991 World Fantasy Convention, 1991
• 168 · The Kind Men Like · Karl Edward Wagner · ss Hotter Blood, ed. Jeff Gelb & Michael Garrett, Pocket, 1991
• 178 · The Coon Suit · Terry Bisson · ss F&SF May ’91
• 181 · Queen Christina and the Windsurfer · Alison Fell · ss Winter’s Tales, New Series: 7, ed. Robin Baird-Smith, Constable, 1991
• 190 · Chui Chai · S. P. Somtow · ss The Ultimate Frankenstein, ed. Byron Preiss, David Kellor, Megan Miller & John Gregory Betancourt, Dell, 1991
• 201 · Mama Gone · Jane Yolen · ss Vampires, ed. Jane Yolen & Martin H. Greenberg, HarperCollins, 1991
• 206 · Peter · Pat Murphy · ss Omni Feb ’91
• 210 · Our Lady of the Harbour [Newford] · Charles de Lint · na Axolotl Press: Eugene, OR, 1991
• 239 · The Visitors’ Book · Stephen Gallagher · ss Darklands, ed. Nicholas Royle, Edgerton Press, 1991
• 249 · At the End of the Day · Steve Rasnic Tem · ss Dead End: City Limits, ed. Paul F. Olson & David B. Silva, St. Martin’s, 1991
• 255 · The Monster · Nina Katerli; trans. by Bernard Meares · ss Soviet Women Writing, ed. Elena J. Kalina, Abbeville Press, 1990
• 261 · Hummers · Lisa Mason · nv IASFM Feb ’91
• 276 · Santa’s Way · James Powell · ss EQMM mid-Dec ’91
• 283 · Call Home · Dennis Etchison · ss Psycho-Paths, ed. Robert Bloch, Tor, 1991
• 290 · The Braille Encyclopaedia · Grant Morrison · ss Hotter Blood, ed. Jeff Gelb & Michael Garrett, Pocket, 1991
• 300 · The Poisoned Story · Rosario Ferré · ss The Youngest Doll, University of Nebraska Press, 1991
• 308 · Blood · Janice Galloway · ex Blood, Secker & Warburg, 1991
• 313 · Dogstar Man · Nancy Willard · ss Full Spectrum 3, ed. Lou Aronica, Amy Stout & Betsy Mitchell, Doubleday Foundation, 1991
• 323 · Persistence of Memory · Joanne Greenberg · ss With the Snow Queen, Little, Brown, 1991
• 336 · You’ll Never Eat Lunch on This Continent Again · Adam Gopnik · ss New Yorker May 27 ’91
• 341 · The Glamour · Thomas Ligotti · ss Grimscribe, Carroll & Graf, 1991
• 348 · The Peony Lantern · Kara Dalkey · ss Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine Issue 10, ed. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Pulphouse, 1991
• 358 · To Be a Hero · Nancy Springer · pm Weird Tales Fll ’91
• 360 · The Same in Any Language · Ramsey Campbell · ss Weird Tales Sum ’91
• 370 · Teratisms · Kathe Koja · ss A Whisper of Blood, ed. Ellen Datlow, Morrow, 1991
• 377 · The Life of a Poet [1951] · Kobo Abe · ss Beyond the Curve, Kodansha, 1991
• 385 · The Witch of Wilton Falls · Gloria Ericson · ss AHMM May ’67
• 398 · Home by the Sea · Pat Cadigan · nv A Whisper of Blood, ed. Ellen Datlow, Morrow, 1991
• 414 · Pish, Posh, Said Hieronymous Bosch · Nancy Willard · pm New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991
• 417 · The Ash of Memory, the Dust of Desire · Poppy Z. Brite · nv Dead End: City Limits, ed. Paul F. Olson & David B. Silva, St. Martin’s, 1991
• 430 · The Pavilion of Frozen Women · S. P. Somtow · nv Cold Shocks, ed. Tim Sullivan, Avon, 1991
• 457 · Moon Songs · Carol Emshwiller · ss The Start of the End of it All and Other Stories, The Women’s Press, 1990
• 465 · The Afternoon of June 8, 1991 · Ian Frazier · vi New Yorker Aug 19 ’91
• 468 · Gwydion and the Dragon · C. J. Cherryh · nv Once Upon a Time, ed. Lester del Rey & Risa Kessler, Legend, 1991
• 486 · A Story Must Be Held · Jane Yolen · pm Colors of a New Day: Writing for South Africa, ed. Sarah LeFanu & Stephen Hayward, Pantheon, 1991
• 488 · The Ogre’s Wife · Pierrette Fleutiaux · ss Grand Street #37 ’91
• 507 · Honorable Mentions: 1991 · Misc. · bi

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: XX ed. Karl Edward Wagner (DAW 0-88677-526-4, Oct ’92 [Sep ’92], $5.50, 349pp, pb, cover by Jim Warren) Best-of-the-year horror anthology of 22 stories, with an introduction by the editor on the state of the horror field.

• 15 · Introduction: Garage Band Fiction · Karl Edward Wagner · in
• 19 · Ma Qui · Alan Brennert · ss F&SF Feb ’91
• 42 · The Same in Any Language · Ramsey Campbell · ss Weird Tales Sum ’91
• 58 · Call Home · Dennis Etchison · ss Psycho-Paths, ed. Robert Bloch, Tor, 1991
• 68 · A Scent of Roses · Jeffrey Goddin · ss Dark Infinity Spr ’91
• 84 · Root Cellar · Nancy Kilpatrick · ss The Vampire’s Crypt #4 ’91
• 91 · An Eye for an Eye · Michael A. Arnzen · ss Outlaw Bikers’ Tattoo Revue #16 ’91
• 99 · The Picnickers · Brian Lumley · nv Final Shadows, ed. Charles L. Grant, Doubleday Foundation, 1991
• 124 · With the Wound Still Wet · Wayne Allen Sallee · ss Cemetery Dance Sum ’91
• 130 · My Giddy Aunt · D. F. Lewis · ss Chills #5 ’91
• 136 · The Lodestone · Sheila Hodgson · nv Ghosts & Scholars #13 ’91; adapted by the author from her play of the same title,; broadcast on BBC Radio 4, on April 19th 1989.
• 161 · Baseball Memories · Edo van Belkom · ss Aethlon Fll ’91
• 174 · The Bacchae · Elizabeth Hand · ss Interzone Jul ’91
• 193 · Common Land · Joel Lane · ss Darklands, ed. Nicholas Royle, Edgerton Press, 1991
• 208 · An Invasion of Angels · Nina Kiriki Hoffman · ss Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine Issue 10, ed. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Pulphouse, 1991
• 224 · The Sharps and Flats Guarantee · C. S. Fuqua · ss Atopos #1 ’91
• 232 · Medusa’s Child · Kim Antieau · ss Final Shadows, ed. Charles L. Grant, Doubleday Foundation, 1991
• 245 · Wall of Masks · t. Winter-Damon · ss Grue #12 ’91
• 264 · Moving Out · Nicholas Royle · ss Skeleton Crew Jan ’91
• 271 · Better Ways in a Wet Alley · Barb Hendee · ss Not One of Us Jan ’91
• 283 · Close to the Earth · Gregory Nicoll · ss Cold Shocks, ed. Tim Sullivan, Avon, 1991
• 298 · Churches of Desire · Philip Nutman · nv Borderlands 2, ed. Thomas F. Monteleone, Borderlands Press, 1991
• 323 · Carven of Onyx · Ron Weighell · nv Tales of Witchcraft, ed. Richard Dalby, O’Mara, 1991

Goodbye, 
Mammoths...and nice to see you briefly again, 1992 annuals...for more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog...

Bill Pronzini and MH Greenberg, editors

Randolph Scott might mean "western" to the World

Magazine issue review: SCIENCE FICTION STORIES, May 1959

from the FictionMags list, 6 January 2004:

(THE ORIGINAL) SCIENCE FICTION STORIES, May 1959, V. 10 #2. 10 
issues/year (monthly without April or June issues), digest. 132pp 
including covers; 35c ($3/yr). Robert A. W. Lowndes, editor; 
published by Columbia Publications.

Cover features two interior illustrations by Ed Emshwiller and what 
looks like a spot illo of a rocket, uncredited. Cover is in three 
colors, white, purple, and yellow. Readers are asked within if they 
like this new (and presumably economical) sort of cover.

6 * Robert Silverberg * There's No Place Like Space * ss (illus. 
Wallace Wood)(cover has it with exclamation point; title on text, in 
contents and in running heads do not)
24 * Basil Wells * Utility Girl * ss (illus. Ed Emshwiller)
42 * Kate Wilhelm * Android, Kill for Me! * ss (illus. Ed Emshwiller)
49 * Kit Reed * Here, Kitty Kitty * ss
57 * A. L. Caramine * Weapon Master * ss
63 * (Silverberg as) Calvin M. Knox * Readin' and Writhin' * book reviews:
Algis Budrys MAN OF EARTH (Ballantine)
Donald Wollheim, ed MEN ON THE MOON/Murray Leinster CITY ON 
THE MOON (Ace)
C. L. Moore DOOMSDAY MORNING (Doubleday)
Lester del Rey ROBOTS AND CHANGELINGS (Ballantine)
Wilmar H. Shiras CHILDREN OF THE ATOM (Avon)
Leo Margulies, ed. THREE TIMES INFINITY (Fawcett Gold Medal)
69 * Ward Moore and Robert Bradford * CADUCEUS WILD, Conclusion of 
Four Parts * sr (illus. Uncredited, probably reprinted from earlier 
issue)
117 * R. A. W. Lowndes and others * The Last Word and the Reckoning 
* combined editorial, reader poll, and letter column, including 
letters from:
118 * F. M. Busby
119 * Murray King
121 * Alma Hill
124 * J. Martin Graetsz

The three-color cover, with three small illustrations not 
reproducing all that well under those circumstances, probably didn't 
help sales; clearly one gets the sense that Lowndes was being 
instructed not only to economize but to WW Scott-up his magazines, 
at this point..."Eight Crewmen and One UTILITY GIRL," the cover 
teases, and one doubts that "Android, Kill for Me!" was KW's first 
choice of title. (I'll also remind the assembled of James Blish's 
little poke at the magazine's title, labelling SFS as if it was a 
neighborhood bar...not just McGinty's, but the Original McGinty's.)

"There's No Place Like Space" (which sounds like it should be the 
label on an early acetate by the Sun Ra Arkestra) is a smooth, minor 
effort with a reasonably deft handling of the breast-fetish would-be 
eroticism of its story of the colony-planet technician forced by 
those darn bureaucrats into taking a vacation in NYC. Much as Knox 
will later in the issue (justly) complain about MAN OF EARTH, this 
could pretty easily be rewritten to describe the wearying effect of 
NYC's crowding and groupthink in the 1950s as much as the 2650s 
(when $7500--whose dollars not quite specified--is a fine wage), and 
how much more fine a house in Woodstock is. Wood's illustrations 
are very recognizably Woodish, and cartoonishly handsome for it (one 
may make obvious puns); the erotism of this late issue of the 
magazine definitely suggests to me the influence of both MANHUNT and 
VENTURE, going beyond even the somewhat more submerged yearning of 
BEYOND and the other '50s magazines.

"Utility Girl" (Irish ballad, or neo-retro recording by the Roches, 
this one) betrays rather more debilitatingly hidebound thought, or 
lack of it ("It was too bad [Utility Girl] Ellson was a woman. A man 
could be groomed to take [first mate] Alpergen's place. [...] But a 
woman--no!"). However, I like the phrase, "the needle gun was 
sewing" a lot. Wells, to judge by his ISFDb entries, contributed 
most often in the '40s to PLANET and in the '60s to Pohl's magazines 
(and to IF when not the Lowndes magazines in the '50s), and as late 
as the early '90s to SPACE AND TIME. Emsh's illo is appropriately frantic, if not quite representative.

"Bored Faculty Wife with Android" (as might've been Wilhelm's 
working title for this near-vignette) is an early example of KW 
turning women's-magazine-fiction tropes to her own purposes, if only 
just so; a biter-bit plot out of every other contemporaneous episode 
of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and every issue of either MANHUNT or AHMM, to say nothing of the lesser CF magazines then, and some 
nicely turned phrases...and the creepy fun of the lustful robot, 
made slightly more suburban (and telegraphed by Emsh's utterly 
appropriate illustration, well-rendered and the Kind Men Like). A 
bit of genuine melancholy seeps through in that the protag is a 
writer caught in a loveless marriage, I gather not a completely 
alien situation to the author at the time.

The Reed story is cute, almost too cute, and not as redeemed as are 
most of her later humorous stories by what could be called 
Bradburyan detail (and usually less romantic than RB), and it posits 
that no one was getting their cats fixed in 1959. True, that? Fun 
enough.

A. L. Caramine...I knew I'd come across that by-line before, and 
ISFDb reinformed me that it was on a guest editorial in one of Barry's issues of FANTASTIC, which leads me to suspect [incorrectly, as it turned out] that this one is also Robert Silverberg  sorry if no, Mr. S.  A twist ending hard not to see coming, although a point for giving the swindler a slightly more amusingly corrupt reason than usual, even if also a point or two off for his relentless "g"-dropping from gerunds and the utter foolishness of his marks.

I have not yet read the synopsis and conclusion of the serial, 

though it seems to be in the GALAXY tradition, this time with MDs in 
charge of society and just waiting to fall on their own scalpels.  
Apparently, this one may not've gotten a US book publication, at 
least, till a 1978 Pinnacle paperback, so clearly this was not a 
robust moneymaker for Moore nor Bradford; I don't know if the latter 
has done anything else notable in sf or otherwise. Since I like 
Moore, I'll probably read it soonish, and may seek out the Pinnacle edition [or the Armchair reprint pictured above] and hope it isn't too bad a job of republishing.

The most interesting assertion, to me, in Knox's reviews is Silverberg's 

crediting FURY primarily to C. L. Moore. Was there some confusion at that time that has since been resolved toward crediting it mostly or entirely to Kuttner? [Silverberg soon told me he doesn't know why he was so certain of this, though he still suspects Fury was mostly Moore's work.] I idly wonder if Margulies actually edited THREE TIMES INFINITY (since it's comprised of Brackett and Bradbury's "Lorelai of the Red Mist," Sturgeon's "The Golden Helix," and Heinlein's "Destination Moon," it presumably wouldn't take anyone too long to assemble), and am pleased to be pointed toward our much-missed-here Frank Robinson's "The Reluctant Heroes" as the best story in the Wollheim antho. I also wonder how the various reviewers (including Damon Knight) felt about that "Readin' and Writhin'" column-title, and if Silverberg might now be the most frequent column-holder in sf-magazines, with however many of these he did, "The Spectroscope" book reviews in AMAZING in the '60s, the 
"Opinion" columns in AMAZING and ASIMOV'S later, "The Observatory" in 
the last AMAZING inpulpation so far, and possibly others I'm overlooking ...not that Damon Knight wasn't pretty widely-dispersed in this regard, as well...

The ads are a reasonably insane bunch; aside from unsurprising house 

ads for DOUBLE ACTION MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE STORIES (the one led off by Wilhelm's "Murderer's Apprentice" and detailed in the FM Index), and FUTURE SCIENCE FICTION, there are the usual pulp-holdover RUPTURED? ads, offers of "spot-reducing" anti-flab handheld vibrators, BOYS! GIRLS! SPECIAL OFFER TO ZOOM YOUR POPULARITY! through the wonders of personalized stationery, with a menu of suggested self-inflicted nicknames you, too, could have included on your letterhead..."Spook" or "Goldbrick Harry" for boys, "Hep Cat" or "Slick Chick" for the XX chromosome crowd, hoo doggie. Also, an offer for unisex hooded sweatshirts emblazoned "U. S. Drinking Team" just to remind us College Humor was already very much with us by 1959. John Boston's much-beloved "You Traveled Through Time for FORBIDDEN LOVE..." SFBC ad would actually be an improvement, on balance...but perhaps not if it nudged the ILLUSTRATED SEX FACTS ad out. For a magazine printed by the reasonably-rated folk in Holyoke, there's unusually dark ink on the relatively large-charactered, uncrowded pages. I wonder how Lowndes might've done with a budget...but, we can wonder this about 

so many editors, eh?